Week In Review: AT&T Boils The Frog, T-Mobile Goes Quibi
1. AT&T Boils The Frog, You know how we keep telling you that the vMVPDs aren’t really all that different from the MVPDs, that the “mesomorph bundles” of 80-100 channels Read More
TV Likely at Center of Marvel and Star Wars’ Upcoming Omnichannel Blitz
Kevin Feige taking over as Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer shows an omnichannel marketing approach that buoys that brands (and maybe Star Wars) through TV. Read More
Can RSNs Dodge A DTC Knockout In Shifting Cable Landscape?
Regional sports networks in California are less likely to be seen as must-haves by many potential subscribers, a study suggests. To survive in the direct-to-consumer future, such channels will need to prove their value as a bundle partner for significant audiences. Read More
Nine Ways Niche VOD Services Can Attract Subscribers Amid The Streaming Wars
Getting subscribers in the door is an existential issue for niche services amid brutal competition. At the Future of TV conference, marketing and business-development executives offered nine tactics crucial to survival amid that competition. Read More
Q&A: Viacom SVP Christian Kurz And The Changing Face Of Power
From Greta Thunberg at the UN to major corporations taking a stand on political issues, traditional lines of power are changing. Viacom executive Christian Kurz talks about his companies new study on power’s changing face, and what it means for brands. Read More
Philo’s Skinnier Bundle – A Q&A With COO Mike Keyserling
Philo offers a different kind of skinny bundle, for a bargain price. But COO Mike Keyserling says the company is thriving, feeding superfans of traditional TV with all the channels they like to binge on. Read More
Apple’s TV+ Giveaway Will Be Huge, Skew What Counts As SVOD Success
Apple is giving away a year of free TV+ service for anyone who buys its hardware. That could bring 100 million or more users onto the service, even with conservative math. How do we value those customers versus all the competition? Read More
Four Themes Spotted at NewFronts West
NewFronts West turned up the volume on the future of entertainment, calling on attendees to “take a stand” … and make a “commitment to making it happen,” (an idea brought Read More
One Way Social Video Can Grab a Piece of TV Budgets? Similar Metrics
Video measurement company Tubular Labs recently revealed new details around a suite of metrics aimed to address social video’s lack of uniform standards, and value those audiences at parity with traditional media channels. Read More
Apple’s TV+, Arcade Bargains Build Price Pressures For Everyone Else
Apple is offering its SVOD and game-streaming services at bargain prices that will pinch the business models of competitors. And any losses Apple absorbs won’t affect its bottom line like some of those others. Read More
Can FASTs Avoid Fraud?
Netflix paved the way for the OTT explosion, but subscription fatigue is starting to set in with consumers. And this is presenting a huge opportunity for ad-supported services like Hulu Read More
The 360 Deal Comes To Video, And It’s About Time
Want to make money in the increasingly complicated and contested online-video business? Join the club. But increasingly, the way for a video service to survive and thrive involves doing more Read More
Carriers Are Choking Video Speeds, But We Don’t Even Use The Pipe We Pay For
New studies suggest that wireless carriers routinely throttle our video services, but we’re not using all our bandwidth anyway. All the new video services, and the companies talking us into buying faster connections, need to figure out a better pitch if they want our money. Read More
Amazon Ramps Up Originals Ad Spend Ahead Of New Competitors’ Arrivals
Amazon substantially increased advertising spending on its new original shows the first half of 2019, as it tried to pull in consumers before the arrival of several new competitors, a new report found. Read More
Marvel Movie/TV Interconnectivity Will Be Uncharted Territory
Disney+ will be using the Marvel Cinematic Universe in an interesting way, to tie TV and movies together unlike anything we’ve seen before. Read More
Ninja’s Leap To Mixer Scrambles Livestreaming But Don’t Cry For Twitch Just Yet
One of Twitch’s biggest stars, Ninja, surprised the livestreaming industry by jumping to rival Mixer. It could be a big deal for the burgeoning business, but Twitch isn’t going anywhere. Read More
Dragging TV Into A RuPaul Future With World Of Wonder’s Co-Founders
World of Wonder founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey have ridden hit show RuPaul’s Drag Race into a diversified TV production company with live events, retail operations, an SVOD channel, major social-media presence and more. Read More
Twitch Still Live-Streaming Champ Despite Growing Competition: Study
Despite YouTube’s 2 billion users and 500 hours of (recorded) video uploaded per minute, Twitch remains the heavyweight champ of livestreaming in the gaming and esports world, according to a Read More
Unique Content Key To Looming Video-Streaming Wars
As users switch from pay TV to online services, they’ll look for unique programming to decide where they subscribe, a new study suggests. And they don’t plan to subscribe to many services either. The streaming wars could get very rough very soon. Read More
Why Facebook Should Have Bought Friends
Amidst the recent streaming war drama that seems to have culminated in the fight over who gets streaming access to Ross, Chandler and Joey, I had a thought: If anyone Read More
The Last Great American TV Manufacturer: Q&A With VIZIO’s William Wang
Last week, I sat down with William Wang, the Founder and CEO of VIZIO, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of television sets. Our conversation was wide ranging, everything from Read More